Falling Into Something Better
by Skylark Evanson
Summary: She was trying to be the voice of reason, but he wasn't making her job too easy. *Can be interpretted as friendship or romance. Take your pick.


**A/N: Wanted to do some Belena for a while now and this idea finally hit me. Yay! At last, I get to write a different pairing! Joyous day! So hope you like it ^.^**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Ben 10 or any associated characters. They are all owned by Man of Action.**

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_Falling Into Something Better_

Ben stayed out at the soccer fields all night. The moon was high in the night sky whenever he looked up at it. The whipping chilly winds nipped at the nape of his neck, sending shivers down his spine. He tucked his jacket a little tighter around him, shutting out what he could of the cold that seemed to surround him in a shrouding mist.

The truth was, he didn't know where to go. If be went home, he'd be in trouble for staying out so late and he'd wind up grounded. They'd already been there before. It hadn't turned out well the first time and it was a place he really didn't want to go back to.

Gwen's house was always an option. She was his cousin, after all; Ben knew she'd always welcome him with open arms and a warm smile. But Ben didn't want her kindness. He didn't want anything but to sit out in the cold and wallow in his misery. The cold was a good enough punishment, wasn't it? He wanted to be caught in a depression. It made him feel better to be horribly depressed. It did.

Then there was always Kevin. Kevin, the brother Ben had always wanted. And he knew he could go to Kevin for almost anything. Almost. And a place to crash for the night was not something he'd go to Kevin's for. Ben knew his best friend would be taunting and teasing him to no conceivable end if he went there. The hero wasn't ready to face that yet. He was still trying to deal with the suffering at hand. He didn't want Kevin to pile on more.

Julie... Well, she was the reason he was sitting out in the soccer fields in the first place. There was no way he was going anywhere near her for a while.

So Ben was stranded on an island of his own. The swelling of the melancholy darkness. The blustering of the icy winds as they sliced at his exposed skin. The ghostly moonlight that poured down a silver beam of silver light. It was all part of his little island that he had secluded himself on. He was stranded with no way off. Stranded without a way to get back. No way back to normalcy.

He liked the seclusion. It was a cure as well as a disease to the hurt that had seeped inside of him. It made him feel better while still making him feel worse. Ben liked the loneliness. It made him feel like he was punishing himself; the redemption was delicious. But yet, he wasn't satisfied. He still wanted to have someone to hold onto a his life raft to get off of that island that he was stuck upon.

"Okay, what the hell are you doing out here?" came the voice of a girl who had a leather jacket dyed scarlet wrapped around her arms and upper body. Tight dark jeans hugged her legs, blocking out the cold. Elena tossed her head to throw a few stray strands of black hair away from her face. "Do you know how many times that jackass you call a best friend has called me?"

It took Ben a few minutes to drink in all these words and to let them develop into a clear idea within the depths of his cranium. Then he blinked and pulled his jade eyes up from staring at the deep emerald grass that covered the massive field. "What?" he asked, only capable of saying one syllable without breaking down. He couldn't break. Ben didn't want to break. He couldn't be broken. He didn't want to be broken. Not like this.

The Validus girl rubbed her hands together, trying to get her blood to flow faster to keep her skin warm against the freezing winds that kissed her flesh like an old friend that had been waiting all along to get her again. Elena had always hated the cold. "Kevin. You know him? Yeah, the shitface called me twenty times. He thinks I know where you are, and lookie here, I _do_ know where you are."

Ben's orbs of green scanned her face for another emotion other than anger and annoyance but found none lying in the features that made up her expression. So he put his head in his hands again and drank in the night's arctic air.

She wasn't stupid. She had known him for long enough to be able to tell when something was wrong. Elena heaved a heavy sigh before plopping herself down onto the bleachers beside him, the metal bench rattling from the sudden force slamming into it. "Talk to me, Ben." Her dark eyes watched his face as a bit of worry became traceable in her features. "I'm here for you. You know that, don't you?"

Instead of answering, Ben stayed quiet. He kept running through his head all the things he did wrong. He kept shivering against the cold, his body trying to tell him how low the temperature was and how he should get inside. Ben didn't want to go inside. He didn't have anywhere to go inside of. Home wasn't an option and Kevin would just make fun of him and Gwen would be all too happy to help. Julie was never going to be an option. Not anymore. He pressed his palms against his eyes, trying to discreetly rub away tears that were trying to fall.

"Ben, come on," said the girl, a bit of force thrown into her unusually husky voice. She wished she sounded more feminine, but she was glad that she wasn't so girly. She had a reputation to uphold. "Talk to me. I'm here for you. I'm always going to be here for you." Elena gently put a hand on his shoulder, the warmth of his body flooding through the jacket and into her hand. She knew he needed someone now. She just wasn't the emotional kind of person that he needed. Elena figured that Ben needed someone who could understand what he was going through. But of course, none of those people knew where he was, and if he hadn't gone to them already, he probably wasn't going to go to them at all. So she would substitute. "Please, Ben?"

He looked over his shoulder to her, eyes slightly red from the stinging torrents of air and from the tears that he forbid from cascading down his cheeks. Then he had to look down again so she wouldn't see the slowly forming tears that rose into his eyes. Ben couldn't believe this was all happening. First Julie and now Elena was trying to help him? He almost wondered if he was trapped in some sort of dreamland, waiting to wake up from the horrid nightmare. The boy wanted to wake up. But he couldn't. How could he wake up if he wasn't asleep to begin with?

Elena decided to try once more. She tentatively reached up and moved a few locks of his cropped brown hair from his face, trying to keep it out of his eyes. The tips of her fingers faintly brushed his warm skin. "Ben, no one is going to judge you. I won't judge you." She felt her face soften as the worry that had nestled its way in her chest burrowed a deeper hole for the Tennyson boy who had been her friend those few years ago. "Just tell me what's wrong."

He drank in a deep breath of the frigid air, feeling another gust of driving wind bluster past his face; another shiver was sent racing down his spine. "Everyone judges me." His voice almost sounded haunted when she heard it. "I always have to be perfect." He swallowed down the lump that was in his throat. He couldn't cry. He just couldn't. "If I'm not perfect, everything shatters." Ben slouched a bit more if it was even possible. His jade eyes grew darker with regret and self-hatred. "I wasn't perfect for her." The fist that Elena could see of his was clenched in anger to the point of his knuckles turning as white as the ivory keys of a piano. "And it shattered."

The girl had to piece together the puzzle that had built up in her mind. He had to be talking about Julie. Kevin had mentioned that no one could find the hero and that he hadn't come home and that they couldn't reach Julie either. That was what she had gotten from the Osmosian. But the rest of it was left up to her to construct into a masterpiece. Elena let all the information slide into place together, fitting in places and not in others. And it was almost entirely completed.

"Life sucks," agreed the girl with a certain solemnity. Her dark eyes were watching him and she almost hoped that he'd feel better with just those two words. As Fate set it, Elena could never have anything that easy. Never. She saw no change in his position nor in his facial features that she could make out behind the short curtain of his muddy brown mop. "Listen, Ben, you're only sixteen. Did you really think you were going to find 'the one' when you're just a kid?" She was trying to be the voice of reason, but he wasn't making her job too easy. "It hardly ever happens like that."

"But she was..." Ben had a thousands words to describe his favorite little Asian girl. Gorgeous. Brilliant. Amazing. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. She was so perfect and he had shattered that. He had shattered his whole world because he hadn't been perfect for her. He should've been perfect for her.

Elena wasn't about to let him finish his sentence. She knew he was in a stage of remorse; the Validus wasn't in the mood to listen to a sad sap story. Not now. It was cold and she had to get him somewhere warm before he got pneumonia or something. The temperature had to be at least twenty-four degrees... It was easily below freezing. "She was stupid for letting you go," said Elena. She tried to keep her voice upbeat and riled up; it was a bit harder than she had hoped. "She was stupid for letting a guy as great as you go. You've saved the universe.. What, three times now?"

A short sniffle came from Ben and he gulped down another lump of tears that wanted to crash onto the emerald blades of grass below. "Something like that," he said with an invisible half-smile slowly ghosting it's way across his pallid and wan face. He still wouldn't look up at his companion.

"She's an idiot for letting a universal hero go!" insisted Elena. Now she could actually feel a bit of fury bubbling in her veins. She was ready to defend Ben at the cost of her life. He was like family to her. "You need to be proud of yourself for that." Elena had a feeling Gwen and Kevin were probably going to kill her later for boosting his ego, but at that moment, he looked like he really needed it. "She doesn't realize how much you actually do. No one's perfect, got that?" Elena wasn't about to let some bitch play with her friend like this. If Ben was this upset tomorrow, Elena decided she would have to have a little talk with Julie after cracking her knuckles and making sure that she had had enough practice with a punching bag.

"Julie was. Julie was always perfect." His voice had taken on that haunted tone again. Ben was only a shell of his former self. Anyone could see his misery if they just glanced upon his crumpled body and his red eyes and his ivory skin.

Elena was never one to hold back from speaking her mind. "Well, you know what? Julie's a bitch." Elena stood up and turned so that she was looking down at Ben. "She doesn't know what she had, does she? You are an awesome guy. You're immature and busier than any other sixteen-year-old that I know, but you're damn loyal and you're damn smart and you're damn awesome and that's damn straight." Her eyes held a blaze of dark rage, fury burning in her orbs of black because some prep girl wanted to play with her friend like he was some kind of toy.

Ben looked up at her. His voice was weak, but at least he didn't sound so distraught and miserable. Elena hated seeing him miserable. It just wasn't right. "Thanks."

The girl shoved her hands in her pockets so that they were protected from the nipping cold that kept pricking her skin with pins of ice. Elena stared up at the forlorn moon that shone down on the emerald field through the echoing darkness. "No problem," she said gently. A faint, warm smile tugged the corners of her mouth upwards. She let her dark eyes return to the hero who was now getting to his feet with a slightly staggering step. "You want to come home with me? My dad made stroganoff if you want some leftovers."

Ben nodded quietly before curling his jacket tighter around him as a shield from the cold. He stood face-to-face with her for a long moment, his eyes still a bit crimson around the edges from all the tears that had threatened to spill.

Elena began the trek to where she had left her bike and the two helmets she had brought. She produced the keys from her pocket. "And who knows," she added, mind still caught on the reason of his pain, "maybe falling out with Julie means you'll be falling into something better."

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**A/N: Sorry if Elena had some attitude, but I kind of want to see her having attitude. Without attitude, she'll end up like Gwen and Julie. Sky does not like that. So review please! Thank you!**

**~Sky**


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